In China, a new era of Web censorship looms

ByMatthew ShaerJune 8, 2009

A man uses a computer inside an Internet cafe in Changzhi, China, on June 3, 2009. The Chinese government says by July 1, all computers in the country must carry software that can filter out pornography from the Internet, according to the New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal, which originally broke the story over the weekend, is reporting that Green Dam, as the software is known, is ostensibly aimed at "protecting young people from 'harmful' content." (The WSJ piece is subscription only.) But there are widespread concerns that the Chinese government will use the program to bar access to politically objectionable content.

As John Timmer at Ars Technica writes, there seems to be some confusion about how the software will be used. The Journal, Timmer points out, "reported that one of Jinhui's founders indicated that the software relies on a database of blocked sites that allows it to be updated remotely." The article continues:

Reuters, however, talked with the same person, who indicated that it can perform semantic and image-based evaluation of incoming content—as such, the founder claimed that it's impossible for the software to be used for general censorship purposes. Still the two capabilities aren't mutually exclusive, and it would certainly be possible to tune Green Dam's semantic engine in a way that enabled it to filter out politics in addition to porn.

Whatever the case, Green Dam will likely make it a lot harder for Chinese dissenters to make their voice heard – no small thing in a nation where freedom of the press is threatened anew every day.